Five people were killed in Basra, Iraq on Sunday as a result of an attack on alcohol sellers, according to this article (registration required) in the New York Times. But this latest outrage is far from an isolated occurrence. And the fanatics -- those who are so certain that their preferred alcohol control policies are correct that they are willing to murder people who disagree with them -- are likely to prevail: "Basra is becoming as dry as the endless desert around it. Nowhere in Iraq are attacks on vendors of alcoholic beverages as common as in the country's second-largest city, 60 miles from the Persian Gulf." What sort of a worldview deems it bad to sell alcohol, but OK to murder people who sell alcohol? Mill! thou shouldst be living at this hour:/Iraq hath need of thee... (Apologies to Wordsworth.)